User talk:Toughpigs
Wayland Flowers Is this picture Wayland Flowers with Bernie Brillstein? Warrick just uploaded and I asked him on his page, but it looks an awful lot like Wayland to me. If only he had Madame with him. -- Nate (talk) 20:00, March 19, 2010 (UTC) :No idea... He's holding Piggy as if he's performing her, but I think he's probably just holding the puppet. So: not a puppeteer, he's another person who was at whatever event that was, and who's holding the puppet to pose with her. -- Danny (talk) 20:06, March 19, 2010 (UTC) Andy Warhol I don't know if you are into Andy Warhol or not, but I just found out something that fascinated me with one of his time capsules they opened in 2004, and I added it to his page. It's also led to a great mystery about the designer Halston, and a sketch I found on here he did of Miss Piggy in ''Jim Henson: The Works. I started a talk page at Talk:Halston if you might perchance know anything. -- Nate (talk) 18:07, March 18, 2010 (UTC) :That's fantastic! I love it. I just edited to expand that section a bit, and include the picture from the Carnegie site. What a neat find! :I don't know anything about that Halston drawing -- I'm not home right now to check my copy of ''The Works, so you know more than I do. :) -- Danny (talk) 18:38, March 18, 2010 (UTC) The Sesame Street Mix or Match Storybook I forget if you had this, or had seen it. —Scott (talk) 04:30, March 18, 2010 (UTC) :I don't have it, and that is unbelievable! I love the scans; that's so much fun. -- Danny (talk) 18:39, March 18, 2010 (UTC) A couple of balls of clay Thanks for Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures (video)! I can't believe they're finally putting it out in the US! And you heard that Dog City is coming out right after Song of the Cloud Forest, right? Boy, and here I thought all we were going to have was Season 4 and the SS CD set to look forward to this year! -- Ken (talk) 02:20, March 16, 2010 (UTC) :Yeah, I'm psyched for the Great Adventures video too -- all three of those, actually. And the CD set comes out pretty soon, yay! -- Danny (talk) 05:22, March 16, 2010 (UTC) Elmo's Rainbow and Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures I saw that you made an edit to Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures, stating that the "Farmers" segment appears in Elmo's Rainbow and Other Springtime Stories. I have the DVD and it doens't contain any Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures sketches, unless it's an easter egg or something. It does have a stop motion segment featuring a farmer, but it's not from the Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures series. Is this indeed an easter egg or did you make a mistake? --Minor muppetz 23:08, March 14, 2010 (UTC) :Ack, I'm sorry -- I misread the Elmo's Rainbow page. I thought that it contained the entire episode for 4200, but now that I look at it again, it says it's just the street scenes. Sorry! What a stupid mistake. I'll take it off the page. -- Danny (talk) 23:11, March 14, 2010 (UTC) Name That Voice What ho! We've been doing a lot of reverts or explanation to different users lately about how we source character voices (and it's been an issue before). Often it's patently obvious when it's Jim Henson or Frank Oz, and folks like Guillermo and Tony have good ears and judgement (and even then we usually ask them on talk pages). But it's a problem with both newer users or just folks who really want to be able to say "So and so played Anything Muppet #6," but are literally naming everyone from Jon Stone to Joey Mazzarino. So, and I've actually had this in mind for a few years, I've finally started a policy page of sorts. I wasn't sure whether to also use it as a page ala Name That Puppet to just post guesses and theories, which clutter a lot of talk pages, but that could be problematic. I'm hoping both firm but clear explanation of what's acceptable *and* links to sources they can use will help. I'm still working on adding big resource (and a lot of fun just to listen to): links to actual voice demos for several Sesame or other puppeteers who also do character or commercial voices (and some for human cast even). Either identifying a character in that demo or using a sample voice as a point of comparison sure beats "I'll bet that's David Rudman" or "I know it's Steve Whitmire because his sneezing sounds like Wembley." Anyway, though it's very much a work in progress, take a look when you get a chance, and if something sounds too obtuse or harsh for our users, feel free to spruce it up! -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:00, March 13, 2010 (UTC) :It's a good idea to talk about this stuff; I'm not sure exactly what the answer is. In many cases, we actually can tell who's who based on the voice -- especially on The Muppet Show and early Sesame Street, where there's a limited set of choices. Henson, Oz, Goelz, Nelson, Hunt and Whitmire each have a stock set of voices that are easily distinguishable from each other's. We spent five years listening to them doing characters every episode, so we know those voices very well. On Sesame, there are some other performers like Kevin Clash and Joey Mazzarino who are really easy to spot, because their voices are very distinctive (and they only do three voices each). :But after a while, especially on Sesame Street, there were other performers whose voices aren't so easy to identify, like David Rudman, Marty Robinson, Jim Martin and Michael Earl. For any given Sesame voice from the mid-80s on, there are a lot more possibilities. :So we don't need a presskit to tell us that Jerry Nelson played Zuzu Fitzwaller, because it's The Muppet Show and he sounds like a hundred other Jerry Nelson characters. But we do need something extra when the voice is more slippery, and there are several possibilities. :The same is true for a lot of our sources -- we demand sources for some things and not others, and it's always obvious to us what needs a source and what we consider to be "common knowledge". For the most part, I think that the contributors here get that. Herman (1RichardHunt) seems to be having a particularly hard time with it. Alex also has some trouble with it sometimes, but he's learning what needs a source and what doesn't. :In general, for the folks that don't get it -- I'm not sure a long essay on it will help. It feels like you either have common sense or you don't. -- Danny (talk) 23:57, March 13, 2010 (UTC) ::Actually, another way of putting it is: We trust you or we don't. Just as I was writing that response, Enrique added voice cast info to "Daddy Helps with the Dishes", identifying Kevin Clash, Ivy Austin and Marty Robinson. I don't feel any need to check on that or bug him for sources, because it's Enrique and he's done almost 14,000 edits, and his track record here is impeccable. Herman is fairly new, and he comes across as moody and untrustworthy. -- Danny (talk) 00:02, March 14, 2010 (UTC) :::You're right, but trimmed of some of the essay stuff, and with demo links, I still think it could be useful (and if only, like our other policies, to be able to save breath and just link to and say "Don't do this.") And I think the biggest thing is just the "Every one-line character needs a performer" and especially "Guessing a voice by one word or sound" stuff, but that is really common sense as you say (but a lot of folks still aren't getting it, and it seems they need to be told outright that it's not productive). But yeah, a lot of it is trust (we have the same thing when it comes to other stuff; we trust each other and Guillermo and Tony and so on when they add something from a personal video even if we don't have access to it or a specific eka, but some newcomer with erratic edits, we ask first). It just crops up most often, and with quite a few users (Garrett still has issues with it), with voices, and mainly those one-shot Sesame obscurities. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 00:10, March 14, 2010 (UTC) ::::Yeah, that makes sense. I made some edits to the policy page, just to trim and clarify. (The people who we direct to that page probably have a lower tolerance for complicated verbiage, if you know what I mean.) So I trimmed some sentences and also made it clear what the good sources and bad sources are. -- Danny (talk) 02:00, March 14, 2010 (UTC) :::::Heh, I like the directness ("If you're guessing, then you're wrong") which, for the kind of issues and users we're discussing, works best. -- 04:14, March 14, 2010 (UTC) Oh, here's that demos section I was telling you about. There's a few more (mostly folks like Drew Massey and Victor Yerrid that I didn't feel like listening to tonight), and the formatting is kind of messy (I wanted to note specific relevant Muppet or related voices as kind of a guide). One of the areas of dispute which at least half a dozen users of varying history have been involved in is female voices (including Fran Brill), so I included all of those I could find (not all the demos are very Muppety, but it still helps). Feel free to pretty it up if you can. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 05:06, March 14, 2010 (UTC) :Oh, that's fun! Although it does help to highlight that some of these performers have a much wider range of voices than the TMS guys... So it's harder to spot them. -- Danny (talk) 07:15, March 14, 2010 (UTC) ::What a great page! I love that the first thing that jumps off the page is If you're guessing, then you're wrong. —Scott (talk) 16:10, March 14, 2010 (UTC) :::That should be the slogan for the whole wiki! -- Ken (talk) 04:23, March 15, 2010 (UTC) Disney Merchandise Hey Kid, I'm going to create the Disney Store Merchandise category, and start moving stuff. As for changing article titles from Muppet towels (Disney Store) to Muppet towels (Disney), I'll leave that up for further talk, or for you to change. I would be fine with it personally. -- Nate (talk) 16:20, March 12, 2010 (UTC) :Okay, great! I don't know about the article titles -- it feels a little weird to me to say (Disney), because it feels a bit like saying (Henson) -- everything is Disney, in a way. But Disney is the manufacturer for Disney Store stuff, so D.Store is a little redundant. I don't know; I'm conflicted. :) -- Danny (talk) 16:23, March 12, 2010 (UTC) ::I suggest this. What about just doing "muppet towels" for now, and if other towels are found from other companies, we can cross those bridges as they happen. -- ''Nate (talk) 17:53, March 12, 2010 (UTC) :::There are more Muppet towels; I've got pictures that I could add but just haven't had the inspiration to do that over anything else. So that's a temporary fix that wouldn't actually solve it... :) My feeling right now is: If the product says Disney Store on the tag, then we say (Disney Store). -- Danny (talk) 18:21, March 12, 2010 (UTC) ::::Okay, I take it back... I just looked at the Disney Store category, and there are a bunch of products (like the snowglobe) where we don't actually know what the tag said. Let's just say (Disney) and have done with it. This time for sure; no backsies. (Disney). -- Danny (talk) 18:23, March 12, 2010 (UTC) Well going through all the stuff today, I noticed that I created some articles that say ''Muppet*Vision 3D in the title when now I don't think they should. Like the Muppet*Vision 3D shot glasses. Those were just Muppet shot glasses sold in the parks, not specific to Muppet*Vision 3D. Likewise I had the Muppet snowglobes (Disney) in the category of 3D merchandise, and really it is better at home now in the Disney Store and Disney Parks merchandise category. I reserve the right to go backsies though if we think otherwise. -- ''Nate (talk) 22:36, March 12, 2010 (UTC) :Yeah, I agree with everything you just said. I'm glad that we have these Parks and Store categories now; I think they'll help us to make those kinds of distinctions better. -- Danny (talk) 00:55, March 13, 2010 (UTC) Danny's talk archive *Muppet Wiki Talk Archives